Kurdish Quran Translation is Full of Errors According to HDP

It was just on May 1, 2015 that the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) announced the completion of the translation of the Quran into Kurdish after five long years of laborious translation work. Now there is a claim that the translation in Kurdish is full of errors.

According to Kurdologist and theologian Kadri Yıldırım, who is also a Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) candidate for MP, the Kurdish translation of the Quran, released by the Justice and Development Party (AKP), was hurriedly printed. He claimed that it was done to gain popular support as the election is scheduled for June 7.

Yıldırım added that he was given a copy of the Kurdish translation about a year ago by the Diyanet so that he could edit the text. He spoke of his claim during a political rally on June 1 together with HDP Diyarbakır MP candidate Altan Tan. He said that the translation was published before he could hand in his revisions to the Diyanet.

According to Yıldırım, the only reason that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) rushed the publication of the Kurdish translation of the Quran before the elections was to appeal to the religious sentiments of the people from Siirt, Bingöl and Erzurum.

He elaborated on the various mistakes he found on the translation when he spoke with İdris Emen of Radikal, a news portal. He said that the plural words were translated into singular and vice versa. Masculine words, according to Yıldırım, were used as feminine words and that many ambiguities existed in the translated text, which he said are unforgiveable when it comes to the Quran.

However, the claims of Yıldırım contrasted completely with the pronouncements of Dr. Yüksel Salman, the Director-General for Religious Publications of the Diyanet. He said that prior to the publication of the Kurdish translation, the text was thoroughly analyzed by experts and members of the Diyanet as well as by theology professors from Turkish universities.

Aside from his views on the Kurdish translation of the Quran, Kadri Yıldırım criticized the AKP’s inconsistent views on the Kurdish language. He said that in February 2012, Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç stated that Kurdish was not a language of civilization. So now he questions why the Quran was translated into Kurdish, a language that had been labeled as uncivilized.

Since their holy book, the Quran has been published in Kurdish, it is proof that Kurdish is a civilized language, so he posed the next question as to why the Kurds are still not allowed to study using their mother tongue.